1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for calculating audience rating. In particular, the present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for calculating audience rating using an interactive television.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, more people are using multimedia, and the industries concerned are more than willing to provide the user-oriented services to meet the user's needs. Among others, the service that is able to do self-observation of the user's consumption pattern to reflect his or her attractiveness has been drawing a lot of attention.
Many attempts have been made to provide help to the users. For example, U.S. Pat No. 5,861,884 disclosed a technique for providing an appropriate user interface to every user, taking advantage of his or her history that shows the favorite items of the user. In other words, comparing the help with a tree, although the original level might below or at the bottom, the user's favorite part can be put in a high level. In this way, the user can find his or her favorite part faster.
As another example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,835,088 suggested a new method for providing a more user-oriented interface by allowing the user to set functions for the buttons the way he or she wants.
Ever since the digital broadcasting was introduced, there has not been any time when additional functions in the broadcasting became a key factor in the broadcasting itself until now. For instance, a method for searching and displaying multimedia was suggested in which the information about the user's preference was extracted based on the user's consumption history information.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,416,693 laid open a more intelligent display method that records the user's display action, such as replay or fast forward, and later describes a user's attractiveness score according to the data segment. In other words, if the user tends to use the replay function more than any others, it is considered as a more important segment, and during the search, it enables a slow display function as well.
An International patent application No. WO9747135 once provided a method for providing a suitable environment for each user by recording device information, such as the user's favorite channel, the user's favorite sound magnitude on each channel and so on.
Further, U.S. Pat. No. 5,758,259 introduced a method providing a program guide based on the user's favorite program genres, instead of transmitting a vast amount of program guide as it is. The user's attractiveness on a certain genre can be figured out by recording the user's ordinary viewing data and extracting his or her habit out of the record.
Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 5,734,444 introduced a recording system of the user's favorite programs automatically using the user's multimedia viewing history.
All of the functions described above are mostly accomplished based on the history record on the user's multimedia data consumption. That is to say, the attractiveness information is extracted from a numerical record of the user's multimedia data consumption, patterns or habits.
Unfortunately however, it has been rather difficult for a broadcasting station to calculate audience rating based on the information only. The bottom line is that the information provided by the traditional method for calculating the audience rating to the broadcasting company was no more than the data (i.e. contents) based on the consumption history information only, or the position information on the user's favorite contents. Namely, without other information about the user's contents consumption method, i.e., the Meta information on the corresponding contents, it is very hard to calculate the audience rating on a certain content more efficiently.